“I do not feel I have done anything wrong,” the guide, Theo Bronkhorst, told NBC News. “This has been a very stressful time for me and my family. We have been pulled into something we are not happy with.”

Mr. Bronkhorst was released last week on $1,000 bail after pleading not guilty to a charge of failing to prevent an illegal hunt. He and Dr. Walter J. Palmer, an American dentist who said he killed the lion, havefaced an international backlash.

Mr. Bronkhorst described the July hunt in an interview last week with The Telegraph. He said that he and Dr. Palmer were “devastated” when they discovered after they killed Cecil that the lion was protected.

Cecil had been part of a University of Oxford study since 2008 and wore a tracking collar. Mr. Bronkhorst said they could not see the lion’s collar while hunting at night when Dr. Palmer first struck the lion with an arrow.

After they killed, beheaded and skinned the lion, Mr. Bronkhorst attempted to dispose of the lion’s collar.

“We would never shoot a collared animal,” he told the Telegraph, adding when he noticed the collar, “I panicked and took it off and put it in a tree.”

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Theo Bronkhorst, a hunt organizer from Zimbabwe, appeared in court on Wednesday, charged with failing to prevent an amateur American hunter from killing the well-known lion Cecil.Published OnJuly 29, 2015CreditImage by European Pressphoto Agency

Dr. Palmer then asked to hunt an elephant but they could not find one large enough for Dr. Palmer’s liking, Mr. Bronkhorst said.

“I don’t want to shoot any animals,” said Mr. Bronkhorst, who has run Bushman Safaris Zimbabwe, a family hunting business, since 1992. “I do it because it is the only way I can earn a living.”

“I had no idea that the lion I took was a known, local favorite, was collared and part of a study until the end of the hunt,” Dr. Palmer said in a statement last week. “I relied on the expertise of my local professional guides to ensure a legal hunt.”

Big-game trophy hunting is controversial but legal in Zimbabwe. Wildlife officials and conservationists say the practice and illegal poaching are causing a global crisis.

The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution last week that its supporters say would foster international cooperation to fight illegal poaching and trafficking of wildlife.

Another American hunter has recently faced criticism for a big-game hunt in which she killed a giraffe on a legal hunt in South Africa. The hunter, Sabrina Corgatelli, has been more defiant in response to the outrage she faced after photographs posted to Facebook showed her wrapped in a dead giraffe. Her page has been overtaken by comments, but she has offered no apology.